Imported Child-Like Sex Dolls Arouse Strong Emotions in Norway

In recent months alone, Norway's National Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS) has seized 21 sex dolls designed as children, which has triggered strong emotions in the Norwegian media. Since autumn 2016, the Norwegian Customs Service has identified several cases of Norwegian citizens ordering and importing sex dolls, which are very lifelike imitations of children.

The dolls, about a meter long, arrived wrapped in blankets and dressed in children's clothing. Some of the recipients aged 18-60 had been previously convicted of sexual offences, while others had children present in their workplaces; still others had been hitherto unbeknown to police for similar conditions, Norwegian national broadcaster NRK reported.

The findings triggered strong reactions among customs officers, who were concerned about the development and chose to inform competent bodies, citing their socio-protective role.

​"I know I react violently when I see this. It simply makes me sick," Jørn Ferner Bergersen, Acting Deputy Director of the Customs Intelligence Center, told NRK, ruling out any chance of coincidence. "There is no doubt that you know very well what you are ordering when you buy this type of thing online," he added.

According to Erik Rand, a police lawyer in the South Western Police District, Norwegian police currently have four cases of storing abusive material under consideration.

The NCIS noted the extremely realistic nature of the confiscated dolls and ventured that sexual intercourse with dolls can break down barriers to child molestation in real life. The confiscations happened to baffle psychologists as well. At present, specialists cannot say for sure whether sex dolls increase the risk of child abuse, or actually alleviate it.

"I have not found any research that somehow links sex dolls with child molestation. Conversely, I believe that sex dolls can prevent child abuse," psychologist Pål Grøndahl of the Oslo University Hospital told the Norwegian daily Dagbladet, suggesting that people with pedophilic inclinations could acquire sex dolls instead of facing the consequences of child abuse.

Therapist sex counselor Margrete Wiede Aasland, who has encountered child-size sex dolls during her work at the NGO Save the Children and is not surprised by the extent and the morbidity of the human imagination, assumed that the opposite effect may be reached instead.

"I do not think these dolls may have a long-term preventive effect. One might get bored of the sex dummy after a while and be tempted to commit felony with a living child," Aasland told NRK, calling on people with pedophilic tendencies to seek help from qualified therapists.

Previously child-like sex dolls have led to trials in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.

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